mr. hoeven: thank you, madam president. i come to the floor today in support of the biotechnology labeling solutions bill. this legislation will avoid a patchwork of state labeling regulations and in so doing will save families thousands of dollars a year, protect american jobs and provide consumers with accurate, transparent information about their food. first of all, i want to thank chairman pat roberts for his leadership on the issue of bioengineered food and for bringing forward his chairman's mark, specifically the biotechnology labeling solutions bill does three things. it immediately ends the problem of having a patchwork of inconsistent state g.m.o. labeling programs. second, it creates a voluntary bioengineering food labeling program within one year, so the usda would set up a voluntary program within a year. and then within three years, it requires the department of agriculture to create a mandatory bioengineered labeling program if there is insufficient information available on a product's bioengineered content.

mr. chairman. in 2014 3,179 people were killed in distracted driving crashes and another 431,000 were injured but right now too few states are receiving federal funding. senator hoeven and i worked on this, it got included in the fast act to make sure states besides connecticut were able to receive some of the funding for educational efforts on distracted driving. and we know these incentive grants are helpful. could you talk about what advances in automated vehicles would mean for reducing the incidents of distracting driving? we know it's just a major issue. it's expanding. it's not just kids. it's adults too. we just had today in our newspaper front page two people hurt, one man -- a man killed, he was a school bus driver, 79 years old, and he lived in a rural area. he was just going out to get his newspaper at the mailbox and it turned out the woman who hit him was going a text and she's been charged with a crime. that's just today. every single day there's something like that. could you talk about how the automated vehicles, whoever can take it, would be helpful? >> i think what that unfortunate and tragic example highlights is the roles these systems can play.

mr. hoeven: mr. president, i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. hoeven: mr. president , i rise today to discuss two amendments i'm introducing to s. 524, the comprehensive addiction and recovery act. across the country, including in my home state of north dakota, families are experiencing the devastating effects of opioid and heroin addiction. in fact, in 2014, 61% of all overdose deaths in the united states were related to opioids. in north dakota alone, overdose deaths have tripled in the past decade and it's no mystery why. in 2014, the north dakota bureau of criminal investigation seized 1,549 dosage units of opioids. in 2015, they seized 5,593. that's a 3.5, 3 1/2-fold, increase in just one year. so an increase of more than three times in just one year. similarly, law enforcement seizures of heroin from canada have grown exponentially. but our data about cross-border drug smuggling is limited. to battle drug abuse effectively, we need